Twitter

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

SOLAR OBSERVING SEPTEMBER 2016 (Updated)

Location: Little Lepreau, NB

Date Time: Various days and times throughout September listed on images.

Weather: September has had many cloudy rainy days with a few nights of frost.Equipment: Borrowed the clubs' 40 mm PST dedicated solar telescope from Saint John Astronomy Club for the month of September. My Nexus 4 cellphone with 15 mm eyepiece attached to Ioptron cellphone adapter.

Attendance: Myself.Report:

September 13 at around 0945 hrs set up scope in back yard for a few minutes. Very little to no activity could be seen on the face of the sun or on its outer limbs in regards to prominence's.

September 16 weather was sunny all day with a strong wind. Viewed Sun with clubs 15 mm and 9 mm eyepieces. In the morning there was a little prominence activity on the 3 o'clock position of the Sun with no activity across the face. By mid afternoon there was a large kind of faint area of activity on the face at around the 4:30 o'clock position. Adjusting one of the rings on the body of the scope seemed to bring this spider web like feature to come in and out of focus. At the same time the small faint prominence at the 3 o'clock position turned into a large hedgerow like prominence with a smaller prominence at the 4:30 position. Always amazing to see a celestial object have changing features in such a short time frame. Early evening seen the smaller prominence at the 4:30 position grown larger with a smaller one appear near the 5 o'clock position. The big hedgerow one at the 3 o'clock position disappeared.

September 21 fog cleared just after 1300 hrs. Imaged sunspot group 2593 on the lower left face of Sun. It came in and out of focus with the adjusting ring. No prominence's could be seen. According to Spaceweather.com sunspot group 2595 had just went behind the right side limb.

September 24 between 0925 hrs and 0945. Frost was on windshield of vehicle in the morning, and some ice on ground. Temp during observing time was around 8C. Observed sunspot group 2597 left of center with a smallish filament to the upper left of that. Prominence's showing up in about the 2 o'clock position on the view screen as images were taken. The zoom feature of the cellphone camera makes closer study possible.

September 28 between 1000 hrs and 1240 hrs. Gusting winds and mostly cloudy at 10am, a few holes in the clouds allowed for some observing but for only for a few seconds at a time. At noon it cleared for about a half hour, then clouded over again for most of the day. At noon, after much playing around with the focuser and the tuner, a huge filament popped out on the right side of the sun. Four prominence's could be seen right next to it. Two more prominence's were seen in about the 7 o'clock position with a disturbance and another filament near them. Another filament was seen near the 11 o'clock position. Note: All these features were there for the last two days, but they were so faint they were hard to see in the eyepiece.

Images:

Images didnt turn out well so drew a picture. Everything was very faint and only showed up after much adjusting of the PST.